November 3, 2012

As you can see by the time between posts, I haven't been blogging here often. Mainly, because I've been working on my book, creating videos for www.learniting5.com and writing at ASCDEdge. Today, I had some spare time to read some blogs, add some comments and find some new people to my Twitter PLN.

Photo credit: Comstock

After about an hour of surfing the blogosphere and Twitterverse, I became thoroughly annoyed and decided I needed a place to vent. Now Role Reversal is typically where I write about best and worst practices in education, but these are educators sharing online, so I figured this was as good a place as any for this post.

So, here I go with some venting.

Things that annoy me about bloggers

1 - Comment moderators: Do you really think that I'm coming to your blog to fill the comment section with expletives? I understand if it's a classroom blog, but I'm not reading those. Open up your comments, for crying out loud. If your audience is teachers, you might try trusting them to do what's right.

2 - Captchas: You know, those squiggly little letters you can hardly see at the bottom of your comment. Type them in wrong, and you are denied. Can't see them? Try listening to them.You'll have a better chance translating Klingon, spoken by a two-year-old. I tried to post a comment to a blog seven times today. That's right, 7!. Each time, what I typed was denied. As a blogger, don't you want comments? Turn off the captchas.

3 - Research taken out of context: Validating your points with research is an admirable practice. Too often, though, bloggers grab a quote and throw it into their blog post, with as much consideration as a four-year-old trying to pin the tail on the donkey. If you're going to quote a source, be sure the researcher supports your position, instead of just grabbing a sentence located in a random Google search.

4 - Private Twitter accounts: Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than a teacher with a private Twitter account. I was looking for people to follow recently, so I went to a trusted Twitter friend. As I scrolled the page of the people she was following, I found someone with an interesting profile. I clicked the follow button, only to be greeted with a message that the person must approve all followers. Twitter isn't Facebook. If you want to be a professional and share information, then unlock your account.

5. Twitter accounts with no profiles: Are you a secret agent? Again, if you're on Twitter, and you can easily be located, why didn't you take two minutes to tell me why I should follow you? Even one sentence would suffice. How about a word, Educator! Better yet, how about going to your account and hitting one key -- Delete!

The list could go on, but I feel better, so I'll stop here. So what do bloggers do that frustrate you?